In a letter addressed to Sebastián Piñera on June 11, more
than 50 U.S. Congressmen called on the Chilean president to support
continued investigations into the disappearance of a Penn State
University mathematics professor during the Pinochet regime.
Boris
Weisfeiler vanished while hiking near the Argentine border in southern
Chile in January 1985. His is the last reported “disappearance” during
the Chilean dictator’s 17-year rule.
Chilean authorities under Gen. Pinochet declared after a cursory
investigation that the 43-year-old mathematics professor had drowned in
the Ñuble River, but declassified documents from the U.S. government
alleged that he was in fact detained by the military and sent to a
secretive German enclave called Colonia Dignidad.
Under the
direction of former Nazi Paul Schaefer, who recently died in prison
serving out his sentence for committing pedophilia and several human
rights violations, the isolated German settlement was used as a torture
center under Pinochet.
Weisfeiler’s sister, Olga Weisfeiler, has
spent more than two decades working to uncover the truth about what
happened to her brother. She had the case reopened in 2000 following the
declassification of the U.S. documents and has traveled to Chile many
times in pursuit of a resolution to the case through the government and
judiciary.
U.S. congressmen Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Glenn
Thompson (R-Penn.) co-authored the letter to President Piñera, which was
signed by senators and representatives from 15 states, including
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations John Kerry
(D-Mass.) and Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown.
The letter
expresses optimism at the decision by the Policía de Investigaciones
(PDI) to “appoint the present Human Rights Brigade led by head officers
Prefecto Arnaldo Pedreros Guenante and Comisario Sandro Gaete Escobar,
and with Alberto Pérez as the chief investigator.”
Still, it
also expressed concern over the possibility that under the new
administration, there might be personnel changes in the PDI resulting in
the dispersal of the current team of investigators. The letters asks
for Piñera’s support in allowing the team, which has already made
progress in pursuing new leads and finding new witnesses, to continue
its work.
Ms. Weisfeiler told the Santiago Times that she had not
received any word from the Piñera administration so far, but that she
hopes that the large number of signatories on the letter will help bring
the case to his attention. She said she believes that the team of
investigators appointed last July has made progress and that replacing
it would be “devastating to the case.”
“It is impossible to
invest so much time and then every few years have a setback and start
from the beginning,” she said. “The case will will never move
forward if every two years you are forced to go back.”
Mr.
Weisfeiler’s body has never been recovered and his case is still under
open investigation.
Paul Watzlavick, press attaché for the U.S.
embassy in Santiago, which has worked closely with Ms. Weisfeiler and
other Weisfeiler family members, said the embassy was following up on
developments in the case and those of two other disappeared U.S.
citizens, Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi. He said, “We are confident
that the recent progress made in those cases will continue.”
Horman
and Teruggi, both journalists who wrote in support of the deposed
Allende government, were killed in first few days after Chile’s 9/11/73
military coup after being taken prisoners by the new military
authorities. Family members of Horman and Teruggi allege U.S.
government complicity in their murders, arguing that the coup was aided
and abetted by the U.S. government and that the new military leaders
would not dare kill U.S. citizens with first checking with their CIA
co-conspirators.
For Ms. Weisfeiler, real progress in her
brother’s case has been slow going. After 25 years and dozens of
investigations, she said, “We still don’t have any resolution to this
case. I don’t know what happened to my brother, whether he was killed
and by whom. We still don’t have solid information.”
When asked
how optimistic she was about the outcome of the current investigation,
she said, “I don’t believe I will find him alive, but I believe I will
eventually get closure.”
By Adrienne Lee (
editor@santiagotimes.cl
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